Fantastic summary John! And congratulations on diving into The Matter With Things - no small reading project to say the least. I'm about 1/3 of the way through and I have to say I keep getting side tracked (for example I had to buy "Madness and Modernism" by Louis Sass based on McGilchrist's references - it's not a light read (even with my neuropsych training) but well worth it in terms of grasping the insanity of the current age). I think there is a few years of study at least in this two volume masterpiece.
I'll be sure to highlight this piece under the first of my series that you have made reference to.
Yeah it's not a light reading project to be sure. It's the kind of book where you read a few pages, then put it down and ruminate on it for a while. That combined with the sheer heft of it ... honestly I'd be mildly surprised if more than a few people on the planet had yet finished it.
Well there would be only a select few who would take on the reading project to start with, primarily those in the philosophy space - I hope I'm wrong, I hope there are many from all manner of disciplines who will absorb what McGilchrist is saying. I believe it's key to us getting back on the tracks lest we all fall, as civilisations have in the past when there's been a coup d'état by the left hemisphere.
Hi, Winston. Millwright mechanic cum business analyst/instructional designer/trainer here. In other words, not working in a philosophy-oriented discipline. Yet, I do have an interest in the deep dive afforded by The Matter With Things, which I will get to eventually. So, yes, the present subject matter can and does appeal to a wider audience than one might initially expect. The challenges, in my opinion, are to make this type of material accessible (cognitively) and findable for the everyday person, like me.
Finding Iain McGilchrist video and then books blew my mind — so grateful. I’m an artist/writer with a strong background in physiological psychology & neuroscience, rat lab and all, and have watched for years with horror our hemispheric orientation get more and more left-brained while discarding almost altogether the master right brain. Hence our divided society and polarization. I never knew it was going to go this far. Sorry to say, it is my belief it is deliberate and quite sinister to boot. I am so glad people like McGilchrist are making an effort to bring us back from our madness.
so glad you found McGilchrist - a phenomenal revelation for me years ago when I first picked up The Master and His Emissary. Let's together spread the word, discuss, debate, and get back to a balanced hemispheric way of being in the world!
I think the mad conspiracy theories are purposefully connected together so the reality somewhere in the middle disappears. It's a way of discrediting sources.
-WTC towers: first years real documentaries serious discussion regarding conspiracy and possible causes. Then suddenly all kind of BS popped up like there were not even airplanes and so on. So crazy ideas that people refused to debate 9/11 anymore as looneys were everywhere.
Now regarding the vaccination/ great reset I'm observing the same. Although it happens much faster. I'm in multiple telegram groups and most started out seriously citing different MDs (we know them) and with valid reasons against vaccines. Now after a year most of the groups turned into flat earth believers and they post absolutely nonsensical materials. But once per week still they post something very valid... So the valid concern gets buried in BS material.
In general I share your concern that conspiracy theories need to be pruned back to bring them closer to the middle. But as to specifics we would probably disagree here and there. Tossing out the baby w/ the bathwater is never a good idea. Holding an extreme aspect of a theory w/ a pinch of salt is more useful than sewing that ground w/ salt so that nothing can grow from it in the future. Also the idea that the earliest, first years reports and ideas are more valid is not necessarily true. I remember w/ JFK how Mark Lane got out to a fast start and remained a dominant figure among critics of the WC, even beyond his known involvement in Jonestown. He seemed a model of rationality and sobriety and his anti-Cia, anti-MIC were enhanced by Oliver Stone's influential movie. But in retrospect, we can view him as a valuable tribal asset and first-class gatekeeper who deflected attention from Jewish involvement in the assassination and cover-up. It took 30 years before Michael Piper could write Final Judgment and even then he could not speak at the yearly critics conventions. He was considered an anti-Semitic nut.
Getting stuck in "conspiracies don't exist" is every bit as limiting as "everything is a conspiracy". The multifaceted nature of reality means that events must be examined from all possible angles in order to gain a global appreciation of their true form.
I think conspiracy got right now a bad name (with the theory) . Recently I watched a Catherine Austin Fitts interview and they tried to pull her into the conspiracy theory talk but she gave a brilliant answer: she said everything is a 'conspiracy' because all human history is about people conspiring together to achieve power, wealth etc. Even us who oppose the conspiracy are conspirators for example here on substack... So there's no question that conspiracy exists the question is how and what kind of exists.
It definitely sounds like your right brain is in control, as it should be.
Thanks for this accurate explanation of how the 2 brain hemispheres affect politics.
It does seem to be very accurate, enlightening and applicable.
This also reminds me of Jill Bolte Taylor, and her story of her left brain stroke, which supports this line of thinking. Her TED talk on this is legendary, and her book 'Whole Brain Living' is the result of that. She actually experienced and reported what it is like to temporarily lose your left hemisphere, which is a very rare experience to survive.
My own experiences with magic mushrooms seems to indicate that they work by enhancing your right brain and diminishing your left brain, which lets your right brain take control, as it should. Sort of like a chemically induced alpha brain state.
They also probably have a profound effect on the vagus nerve and pineal gland?
Who, might I ask, do you presume might be able to do that? One might think it possible that the JFK murder cabal would have a core and that most of the irrelevant pebbles, rocks, boulders and asteroidal sized masses around the core had found a place to land or a space to fly away into the Void. More than sixty years and the dust particles still blur the vision of both the left and the right.
Besides, McGilchrist as well as the masc- and femme-brained dualisms have as this time been discarded in favor of imagining the self-examined focus of the organ as a unified unitary organ as the ultimate reality.
Some leftist troll has captured the heart of Dejah Thoris and they have fled from Helium together while you make these intricate political diagrams justifying the sway of Locke, Burke and Ricardo while objecting to the possibilities that suggest that Marx may well have found a path that would lead, in a world of suffering, to less suffering.
Apr 21, 2022·edited Apr 21, 2022Liked by John Carter
Great read and summary, thanks! Yes, it's a hefty book, but also stunningly beautiful as a hardcover (I took the plunge after ruminating for a while and spent the fortune for the real thing...)
The only thing I'd like to add is that the political left/right identification with RH/LH thinking strikes me as somewhat too sharp; having grown up in Germany I'm very familiar with the postmodern intellectual milieu, and a recurring theme has always been an emphasis on intuition, "wholeness", etc. as opposed to cold materialist science. Well, the intellectuals at the time took that impulse and messed it up, left-brain-style, so it's complicated. Note that McGilchrist often relies on many thinkers that postmodern leftism sees as part of its tradition (Hegel, Schelling, Heidegger, Jung etc.) All I'm saying is that I agree with you with regard to the current political climate, but let's not forget that the right can be very left-brainy too, like with fundamentalist religion, fixed moral codes instead of moral intuition, etc. As McGilchrist would probably agree, it's often not so black-and-white...
That's a very reasonable point, and I agree with your clarification - the identity between hemispheric characteristics and the current divide is to a certain degree a happy accident.
However, it has always struck me as rather precious of the left to claim Heidegger, Jung, Nietzsche, etc. as their own, which those thinkers themselves would certainly have rejected. Heidegger for example was a member of the NSDAP, and never recanted. It seems to me that the left often simply declares any significant intellectual or artistic figure of the right for their own, in order to bolster their claim to be the smart ones; and when this is fully impossible, they simply do their best to forget them.
What I discovered recently on brain-hemispheres was that there are vertical and horizontal thinkers (as opposed to left and right) Meaning, that this is a DNA, genetic, hard-wired mindset within cultures. To make it simple there is a nautical, sea-faring mentality that has to be able to adjust to a multitude of differentials on a daily basis, and a land-locked, agrarian, fixed mentality. One mindset flexible and agile, the other rigid.
Interesting. When I was learning to sail there were people in the class who could almost instinctively get it—where the wind was, how to adjust to it, even of they hated water and boats altogether. And then there were other people who simply could not figure it out. “Into the wind” or “away from the wind” meant nothing to them. I think they equated “wind” with “air” and so the wind was everywhere. It got me thinking there must be “genetic sailors.”
This may be a little different than what you’re talking about, but I think about ways of passing/spreading ideas. One is from parent to child in a vertical manner. This is deeper (more right brained?) Another is to others through speaking, writing, videos, social media, etc- horizontal. I think it’s really interesting that Jesus’ symbol is a cross, where the vertical and horizontal meet. And of course, one very important thing He did was come to say that it’s not just for Jews, ethics are universal.
I’ve been reading The Master and His Emissary for a while and trying to figure out if and how this fits together. I’ve really enjoyed the parts of the book where McGilcrest talks about the reformation as a left brain phenomenon.
This explains the difference between those who are concerned with the details of COVID (Who is most affected? Who is not particularly in danger?), the mitigation efforts (Do lockdowns do more harm than good? Do masks actually work?), and the vaccines (Do they really work? Can they harm? Do they kill?), and those who are all-in on these same subjects, with little care for the details and an overwhelming desire to "protect" and an absolute sureness that their actions are positive, all while ignoring the warning signs (which is counter-intuitive if you're trying to protect people).
Sep 26, 2023·edited Sep 26, 2023Liked by John Carter
Excellent article. And delighted to see this work now spreading even further.
Just one thing to add, the Catholic Institution has indeed been very destructive and left-brain dogmatic for almost all of its history. But Old Catholic Theology as found in for example Dante, is extraordinarily "both brained" and right hemispheric (thus all his attacks on the Church). McGilchrist struggles with finding the remedy for the ills, though implicitly stating it in his last chapter on the Sacred in TMWT. A solution to rebalancing the hemispheres personally and culturally, is to be found in Dante. Understanding and combining the metaphorical Virgil & Beatrice. But insist on Virgil/Reason as a "threshold of consent".
Yes indeed - right after it was published here in Britain. Plus discussed it for about a year on McGilchrist's member website. It goes quite a lot further into metaphysics, ontology and even theology at the end. Revolutionary work - for decades/centuries to come.
That's impressive. The only other person I know who's read the entirety of TMWT is me. A few others I know have read sections of it, but getting through the full weight of that tome is an accomplishment.
Indeed - and I should probably review it again (and I should admit that some of the neuroscience in Part I was skimmed).
I had huge enthusiasm for his work in the beginnnig (and still do), and I think the insights should be a mandatory part of the culture at large. It percolates slowly though, perhaps because it's written on the left-brain's territory, thus attracting mostly disgruntled left-brain tilted people, who are finding relief and explanations, but few solutions. Promoting the work to more right-brained or both-brained people is often met by long silence. But hopefully this will change - as far as I can tell the most effective solution comes through a humility and self-restraint of the left brain, which for most people necessitates some degree of "belief" in the Transcendent. Which also could be the right remedy to redress the imbalance into something like the spirit of the Florentine Renaissance, only this time from the other "direction": getting a sense of allegorical and symbolic wisdom and realities again.
I think this is intentional on his part, and necessary. If you're already balanced you don't really need to hear it. If you're not, speaking the language of the LH is the only way to reach you.
Sep 26, 2023·edited Sep 26, 2023Liked by John Carter
Absolutely. In normal times we wouldn't need to hear or think about this. It's because it's becoming a serious disease in society that more of us need to engage with it.
But still, there is a frustration among many that he doesn't provide more answers. I don't think that's fair, we shouldn't demand too much of one single individual, and he's clearly a genius of our times, but the solutions will have to be RH based, is my working hypothesis.
This is the single best post I've read this year. I keep coming back to it. Congratualtions on making something we've all suspected more clear. I never wanted to ascribe psychosis to the many leftists I know. Didn't want to engage in "you're crazy" shouting matches. They haven't broken w/ reality. They've just attempted to bend it to their preferred arc.
There's very little point in shouting at the insane that they're insane - being insane, they are incapable of recognizing their insanity.
So far as reality goes, the left made a hard break with it many, many years ago when the postmodernists first rejected truth as a valid ontological category. The descent into mass psychosis has simply continued from there.
Maybe we disagree about this. Let's dig a little, define our terms.
I rejected the Mass Psychosis Formation theory because it seemed extreme and based on some paper or book nobody's read (slight exaggeration). I don't think the Left made a hard break w/ reality many years ago. I think they kept going on a left brain trajectory - progressivism. They were encouraged not to quit, not to pause, certainly not to reverse course.
OK, they ignore more and more right brain insights but it's not like they need collective institutionalization or chronic schedules of psych meds. They're not crazy. They're sick, a class of neurotics. Such people have always been among us. People who routinely vote against their own interest are legion today and yesterday.. They're blocked from seeing truth by the power elite who constantly rattle their cages and conservative cages as well.
I just don't think it is helpful in the longer run to write off leftists as lunatics when that's not what McGilchrist is saying.
Strictly speaking, I think the term is mass formation, which is distinct from mass psychosis.
I'd define insanity as any disorder if the mind that leads to a disconnect between perception and reality, in particular if it then leads to dangerous, counterproductive behavior. Left brain hyper-dominance meets all of those criteria. Which isn't to say that all insanity is explained by this mechanism; rather that the phenomenon of left-brain hyper-dominance is a specific form of psychosis, which happens to match the symptomology commonly observed on the left.
There's also the clinical data showing that emotional disturbances (depression, bipolar, borderline, etc) are significantly more prevalent amongst those identifying with the left - significant both in the statistical and in the colloquial sense of the term. That's consistent with the hypothesis that the right is generally sane, and the left generally insane. Whether it's that the left attracts the insane or manufactures them is an interesting question (I suspect both).
Warlord of Mars, you're quite an articulate archon (in Greco-Roman terms not gnostic-alien) and it would be churlish of me to turn around and, from the ranks, impudently impugn your interpretive agenda of MFP so soon after after praising it to the hilt. So let me redirect my rhetorical quiver to a single classically-villainous strike against its most prestigous proponent - the very designated messenger of disinformation: Robert Malone, no less than the whistle-blowing, self-procclaimed inventor of mRNA gene therapy. And who dare trifle w/ dat guy?
I smelled a rat the moment he declaimed from the Capitol steps that the best historical example of MFP was Nazi Germany in the 30's. Ain't that cute? Bravely stepping up to speak co-vid truth to power by reinforcing the fundamental plank of Jewish moral hegemony.
Is that mere co-incidence at a crucial moment in the development of a meme? I think not. All this talk about Nazi doctors and their experiments on Jewish prisoners making us all victims now is straight out of a neo-con playbook. They lead us down paths of their choosing. Our enemy is neo-conservatism even more than libtards and blacks and gays because they're crafty vipers, not expendable minions.
In Malone's case, I'm inclined to shrug: boomers gonna boom. From what I can tell, he only started opening his eyes a couple of years ago. That said his long-standing connection to the national security state, e.g. consulting for DTRA, is cause for caution.
I’m a lot late to this party since I’m only now reading through your earlier posts in order to learn more about what you have to say.
Because?
I read one of your essays which was posted on the SOTT news aggregation site (which I’ve been reading daily since June 2006).
I see SOTT has posted your latest blog entry re Cosmic Information Transducers on their site today as well. 🥳
And, I found your initial blog post published on SOTT and your interview with them which I listened to yesterday a joyfully stimulating, thoughtful and inspiring read & conversation.
Thank you so much for offering both brain and soul food to counter the joy-killers’ continuous onslaught upon our psyches of nrg-depleting faux-food.
Yesterday, I watched your interview with Harrison,Elan, & Adam on SOTT.
Another uplifting exchange.
I especially appreciated you differentiating and describing your evaluation of a values-based focus and a virtues-based focus. That cleared up some of my own annoyance with the continuous spouting of “family-values” by simply re-framing that viewpoint to “family-virtues”.
If families could focus more on acting in accordance with virtuous lifestyles, that would appeal more to me personally than focusing on family values imo.
But I digress.
I decided to check out your other blog postings and chose to start at the beginning.
While reading your above post, I was struck by the synchronicity of what I’ve been mulling over in my mind these past 3 days vis-a-vis what you’ve outlined in this particular blog post.
Thank you for stating so clearly & succinctly the Left & Right Brain Hemispheres’ different attitudes.
Now I understand better why so many of my own Right Brain Hemisphere communications with more Left Brain Hemisphere oriented minds appears to me to fall into a black hole.
Well good. That helps me realize I can simply drop my own expectations that if I just invest more nrg into reaching a better understanding with LBH-oriented minds, that we can both increase and expand our world views.
So . . . maybe not? Lol
Anyway, just wanted to acknowledge your butterfly wings effect upon my own thinking in a profoundly helpful way and to say thank you very much for that. 🤗
Regarding the values v virtues thing, what got me thinking about that wasn't 'family values' (although it's a good example), but rather the nebulous 'our values' that are always invoked by pathocrats as their argument for why some country needs to be destroyed, some ancient tradition uprooted, or yet more freedoms and wealth stripped from the people and placed into the pathocrats own hands. We hear about 'our values' constantly ... but never about virtue.
I did understand which application of that ubiquitous term “values” you were referring to but my mind shifted into another gear and I am actually personally as saturated by the incessant talk by conservatives of “family values” which as I recall began in the 70’s evangelical TV churches and became the right wing political talking point ad nauseam since. Then I would observe their families and frankly they appeared to me to reveal more dysfunction than anything I would personally “value”.
My own family stressed adhering to simple virtues like no lying, no taking anything that belongs to another, no tattling on others, no hitting, no quarreling, no yelling, no leaving messes for others to clean up, taking proper care of our own belongings, respecting others belongings— especially when borrowing from others, doing our chores and homework before playing, earning our own money — no allowances — we were too poor for that — restricted TV which bothered none of us since all 7 members were voracious readers - no sassing - no swearing by kids or parents - basic stuff like that.
I interpreted “values” to mean what a person considers valuable
And what I consider valuable are the virtues.
In current times it seems like “values” are still what people consider valuable to them but what they value are vices rather than virtues.
Like let’s see who can win the race to the bottom of the black hole.
Where I first noticed that phenomenon was with the rock bands. Who could wear the ugliest, sleeziest outfits, the most unattractive hairstyles, the foulest lyrics, the screechiest guitar sounds.
Movies followed suit.
Dressing down for fancy events. Attending the ballet in denim jean jackets. Sloppy, unkempt, slatternly, gross presentations.
One day I was admiring the beautiful color combination my friend was wearing and she said . . . “Well, it’s my responsibility to others to present an aesthetically pleasing appearance since I’m part of their environment and they have to look at me so why would I subject others to ugly or disgusting?”
I took that to heart — mainly because one of my art expressions is acting as if my body is a blank canvas and my attire is the painting. Besides, it’s as fun as creative cooking or arranging objects in space in aesthetically pleasing ways and being organized is necessary in order to easily locate items.
Whew. I went way off track there.
The point was values vs virtues.
Yep. The new definition of values means vices.
Seems as if everything has been inverted and twisted into black magic. Like an evil alchemy transforming gold into lead. Sounds like the Black Sun contraction and death principle vs the radiant solar sun of expansion and growth.
Oh right. The “values” of the pathocrats. Exactly!!
Another inversion.
Normalizing pathocracy & pathocratic values and pathologizing normality and normal bales.
The depths of deception flourish in the deep swamps. Dredge the swamp and what’s hiding down there in the mud?
I’m actually more annoyed sometimes by people believing the lies than by the liars themselves. It’s in the nature of liars to lie. Like it’s in the nature of scorpions to sting. That the liars get away with lying because people excuse their lies or are afraid to confront the liars and hold them accountable or fear the consequences or fall out of confronting liars
Maybe I just feel annoyed by the fact that they are grown adults, not children, and honoring their fears seems more important and valuable than truth and honesty and courage.
Not very compassionate or empathic on my part. I did that. The friends I most value were the ones who didn’t let me get away with nonsense. They would call me on my BS. They didn’t mince words or soft pedal or worry about hurting my precious feelings or sensitivities. I learned more about myself and what to self-correct than from all my other friends who were oh so kind. Kindness is nice. And it’s easy-peasy to be kind to others because why not?
But when it comes to liars, I am definitely not kind.
Oops. Went off track again. Time to cease and desist. Lol
Thank you for your reply. Clarified more specifically what I missed.
You have captured perfectly what I meant about values vs virtues - actual behavior, rather than empty words. It's nice to find someone who understands that so easily. It's an entirely foreign concept to most in this age.
This:
“Well, it’s my responsibility to others to present an aesthetically pleasing appearance since I’m part of their environment and they have to look at me so why would I subject others to ugly or disgusting?”
Is something I desperately wish more people understood. Have you noticed how it's those who are most aggressively ugly who make the biggest deal about not offending others with speech? Seemingly blind (I guess they'd almost have to be) to how offensive their appearance is. The embrace of ugliness is a form of spiritual pollution far worse than anything we could dump in the air or water, in my opinion.
Potentiality vs actuality; becoming vs being; intention vs action; imagination vs realization. Focusing too much on one or the other is an error. Modern society prioritizes "values" - essentially, beliefs - and all but forgets about virtue, by which values are instantiated in the world. Thus our values become empty words.
Sep 26, 2023·edited Sep 26, 2023Liked by John Carter
100% agreed. And sounds like you have the "both-brained" balance here exactly right! Not one or the other, but the right blend is the answer. Or, the Unity.
Ok That’s it. I’m over playing this ridiculous one-thumb typing game on my iPhone.
I’m charging up my laptop so I can type like a genuine civilized (as opposed to civil-lies) person with all ten digits like a normal person who recognizes that that’s what it means to be a card-carrying member of the digital age — To Wit: using all ten digits to type text.
The good thing about using one digit typing is that I’m forced to be less verbose because once I get all ten digits going at light speed, I end up writing essays rather than brief comments.
That’s a warning to myself. To refuse to get carried away.
My sister calls it TMI. Too much information. And I reply, omg! And here I am complaining that I have to practically pull teeth to get people to give me enuf information. Short cuts nearly short circuit my internal motherboard. Shorthand is for secretaries. Now it’s ttyl and TL;tr. and I have to ask what do you mean?
Besides, to me TMI means Transmarginal Inhibition.
Pretty much all my comments get composed on my phone, because I can do that in my comfy chair. Thank God for swipe typing though. Real composition, though, requires a keyboard.
This is an interesting article. However, over the years I have become more and more convinced that 'Left and Right' is just a false dichotomy. The only true political dimension that matters is libertarian vs authoritarian. Both the traditional left and right are authoritarian.
The best way to see that they are a false dichotomy is that at every particular moment they maintain apparently different ideas about how to exert their authoritarian control, but often they reverse them over time. There are multiple examples of this.
Another way to see it is this: who is more similar to a Democrat politician? A Republican politician! When you scratch the thin rhetorical coating of the political discourse, you find the same desire to control others in the way that most benefits you.
I believe it was you who recently wrote an article about the purpose of false dichotomies. They are extremely useful to restrict the narrative into well defined limits. You can only lean to the right or to the left, which are the same thing!
What they want to prevent at all costs is that you oppose both and rather embrace the libertarian camp.
Researchers have discovered that human's political positions are specified on at least 6 orthogonal axes. https://6axes.github.io/ Others quote 12 axes. https://politicaltests.github.io/12axes/ That means that a proper treatment of the political space is not a spectrum, or even a 2D plane, but hyperdimensional space. Probably, over centuries, people groups move and shift through this space, and presumably there are instances where people form a thread through the hyperspace. You could then draw a line through that thread and call it your "one-dimensional political spectrum", but that would be simply an artifact of the moment. As time continues to flow, the people would presumably disperse from the thread, making it eventually impossible to draw a line through the hyperdimensional space such that every individual maps to a single point on the line. Instead, individuals start mapping to multiple points on the line, making the left-right distinction useless.
I'm not entirely sure about mapping cerebral dominance onto politics. My experience of left-brain awareness is that is more female in nature: intuitive, emotional, somewhat prone to hysteria and neurosis, suggestible (possibly hypnosis involves altering cerebral dominance), whereas the right brain is more of a military man. The current caricature of the Left is distinctly female in nature, and wholly dependent on the female vote (which appears to have been a mistake), whereas the virtues of the (non-caricature) Right are distinctly masculine: honor (largely alien to females), duty, order, strength, structure.
See Jaynes, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", one of those books that even if one doesn't agree with the basic argument, the breadth and depth of material covered make it well worth reading.
As a bipolar sufferer this post sent me into thinking.
When I was in manic mode I was very creative, and that's stereotypically a right brain thing. I even had some hallucinatory trip-like moments, without drugs. I thought that was more like right brain overfunctioning. What was happening to me then? Left brain overriding reality and bringing the right side with it?
It was probably just a bad model of the brain. :) I haven't studied McGilchrist's work directly, but one should be careful about reading too much into it. Reading too much into it is a left-brain thing. xD
Fantastic summary John! And congratulations on diving into The Matter With Things - no small reading project to say the least. I'm about 1/3 of the way through and I have to say I keep getting side tracked (for example I had to buy "Madness and Modernism" by Louis Sass based on McGilchrist's references - it's not a light read (even with my neuropsych training) but well worth it in terms of grasping the insanity of the current age). I think there is a few years of study at least in this two volume masterpiece.
I'll be sure to highlight this piece under the first of my series that you have made reference to.
Thanks man!
Yeah it's not a light reading project to be sure. It's the kind of book where you read a few pages, then put it down and ruminate on it for a while. That combined with the sheer heft of it ... honestly I'd be mildly surprised if more than a few people on the planet had yet finished it.
Well there would be only a select few who would take on the reading project to start with, primarily those in the philosophy space - I hope I'm wrong, I hope there are many from all manner of disciplines who will absorb what McGilchrist is saying. I believe it's key to us getting back on the tracks lest we all fall, as civilisations have in the past when there's been a coup d'état by the left hemisphere.
Hi, Winston. Millwright mechanic cum business analyst/instructional designer/trainer here. In other words, not working in a philosophy-oriented discipline. Yet, I do have an interest in the deep dive afforded by The Matter With Things, which I will get to eventually. So, yes, the present subject matter can and does appeal to a wider audience than one might initially expect. The challenges, in my opinion, are to make this type of material accessible (cognitively) and findable for the everyday person, like me.
Finding Iain McGilchrist video and then books blew my mind — so grateful. I’m an artist/writer with a strong background in physiological psychology & neuroscience, rat lab and all, and have watched for years with horror our hemispheric orientation get more and more left-brained while discarding almost altogether the master right brain. Hence our divided society and polarization. I never knew it was going to go this far. Sorry to say, it is my belief it is deliberate and quite sinister to boot. I am so glad people like McGilchrist are making an effort to bring us back from our madness.
so glad you found McGilchrist - a phenomenal revelation for me years ago when I first picked up The Master and His Emissary. Let's together spread the word, discuss, debate, and get back to a balanced hemispheric way of being in the world!
About conspiracy theories:
I think the mad conspiracy theories are purposefully connected together so the reality somewhere in the middle disappears. It's a way of discrediting sources.
-WTC towers: first years real documentaries serious discussion regarding conspiracy and possible causes. Then suddenly all kind of BS popped up like there were not even airplanes and so on. So crazy ideas that people refused to debate 9/11 anymore as looneys were everywhere.
Now regarding the vaccination/ great reset I'm observing the same. Although it happens much faster. I'm in multiple telegram groups and most started out seriously citing different MDs (we know them) and with valid reasons against vaccines. Now after a year most of the groups turned into flat earth believers and they post absolutely nonsensical materials. But once per week still they post something very valid... So the valid concern gets buried in BS material.
In general I share your concern that conspiracy theories need to be pruned back to bring them closer to the middle. But as to specifics we would probably disagree here and there. Tossing out the baby w/ the bathwater is never a good idea. Holding an extreme aspect of a theory w/ a pinch of salt is more useful than sewing that ground w/ salt so that nothing can grow from it in the future. Also the idea that the earliest, first years reports and ideas are more valid is not necessarily true. I remember w/ JFK how Mark Lane got out to a fast start and remained a dominant figure among critics of the WC, even beyond his known involvement in Jonestown. He seemed a model of rationality and sobriety and his anti-Cia, anti-MIC were enhanced by Oliver Stone's influential movie. But in retrospect, we can view him as a valuable tribal asset and first-class gatekeeper who deflected attention from Jewish involvement in the assassination and cover-up. It took 30 years before Michael Piper could write Final Judgment and even then he could not speak at the yearly critics conventions. He was considered an anti-Semitic nut.
Getting stuck in "conspiracies don't exist" is every bit as limiting as "everything is a conspiracy". The multifaceted nature of reality means that events must be examined from all possible angles in order to gain a global appreciation of their true form.
I think conspiracy got right now a bad name (with the theory) . Recently I watched a Catherine Austin Fitts interview and they tried to pull her into the conspiracy theory talk but she gave a brilliant answer: she said everything is a 'conspiracy' because all human history is about people conspiring together to achieve power, wealth etc. Even us who oppose the conspiracy are conspirators for example here on substack... So there's no question that conspiracy exists the question is how and what kind of exists.
Correct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpzJgFM78us&list=RDBpzJgFM78us&start_radio=1
It definitely sounds like your right brain is in control, as it should be.
Thanks for this accurate explanation of how the 2 brain hemispheres affect politics.
It does seem to be very accurate, enlightening and applicable.
This also reminds me of Jill Bolte Taylor, and her story of her left brain stroke, which supports this line of thinking. Her TED talk on this is legendary, and her book 'Whole Brain Living' is the result of that. She actually experienced and reported what it is like to temporarily lose your left hemisphere, which is a very rare experience to survive.
My own experiences with magic mushrooms seems to indicate that they work by enhancing your right brain and diminishing your left brain, which lets your right brain take control, as it should. Sort of like a chemically induced alpha brain state.
They also probably have a profound effect on the vagus nerve and pineal gland?
That's just a hunch.
Who, might I ask, do you presume might be able to do that? One might think it possible that the JFK murder cabal would have a core and that most of the irrelevant pebbles, rocks, boulders and asteroidal sized masses around the core had found a place to land or a space to fly away into the Void. More than sixty years and the dust particles still blur the vision of both the left and the right.
Besides, McGilchrist as well as the masc- and femme-brained dualisms have as this time been discarded in favor of imagining the self-examined focus of the organ as a unified unitary organ as the ultimate reality.
Some leftist troll has captured the heart of Dejah Thoris and they have fled from Helium together while you make these intricate political diagrams justifying the sway of Locke, Burke and Ricardo while objecting to the possibilities that suggest that Marx may well have found a path that would lead, in a world of suffering, to less suffering.
What are you on about? Aside from simping for Marxism, apparently.
Great read and summary, thanks! Yes, it's a hefty book, but also stunningly beautiful as a hardcover (I took the plunge after ruminating for a while and spent the fortune for the real thing...)
The only thing I'd like to add is that the political left/right identification with RH/LH thinking strikes me as somewhat too sharp; having grown up in Germany I'm very familiar with the postmodern intellectual milieu, and a recurring theme has always been an emphasis on intuition, "wholeness", etc. as opposed to cold materialist science. Well, the intellectuals at the time took that impulse and messed it up, left-brain-style, so it's complicated. Note that McGilchrist often relies on many thinkers that postmodern leftism sees as part of its tradition (Hegel, Schelling, Heidegger, Jung etc.) All I'm saying is that I agree with you with regard to the current political climate, but let's not forget that the right can be very left-brainy too, like with fundamentalist religion, fixed moral codes instead of moral intuition, etc. As McGilchrist would probably agree, it's often not so black-and-white...
Just some thoughts, thanks again!
That's a very reasonable point, and I agree with your clarification - the identity between hemispheric characteristics and the current divide is to a certain degree a happy accident.
However, it has always struck me as rather precious of the left to claim Heidegger, Jung, Nietzsche, etc. as their own, which those thinkers themselves would certainly have rejected. Heidegger for example was a member of the NSDAP, and never recanted. It seems to me that the left often simply declares any significant intellectual or artistic figure of the right for their own, in order to bolster their claim to be the smart ones; and when this is fully impossible, they simply do their best to forget them.
What I discovered recently on brain-hemispheres was that there are vertical and horizontal thinkers (as opposed to left and right) Meaning, that this is a DNA, genetic, hard-wired mindset within cultures. To make it simple there is a nautical, sea-faring mentality that has to be able to adjust to a multitude of differentials on a daily basis, and a land-locked, agrarian, fixed mentality. One mindset flexible and agile, the other rigid.
Interesting. When I was learning to sail there were people in the class who could almost instinctively get it—where the wind was, how to adjust to it, even of they hated water and boats altogether. And then there were other people who simply could not figure it out. “Into the wind” or “away from the wind” meant nothing to them. I think they equated “wind” with “air” and so the wind was everywhere. It got me thinking there must be “genetic sailors.”
This may be a little different than what you’re talking about, but I think about ways of passing/spreading ideas. One is from parent to child in a vertical manner. This is deeper (more right brained?) Another is to others through speaking, writing, videos, social media, etc- horizontal. I think it’s really interesting that Jesus’ symbol is a cross, where the vertical and horizontal meet. And of course, one very important thing He did was come to say that it’s not just for Jews, ethics are universal.
I’ve been reading The Master and His Emissary for a while and trying to figure out if and how this fits together. I’ve really enjoyed the parts of the book where McGilcrest talks about the reformation as a left brain phenomenon.
This explains the difference between those who are concerned with the details of COVID (Who is most affected? Who is not particularly in danger?), the mitigation efforts (Do lockdowns do more harm than good? Do masks actually work?), and the vaccines (Do they really work? Can they harm? Do they kill?), and those who are all-in on these same subjects, with little care for the details and an overwhelming desire to "protect" and an absolute sureness that their actions are positive, all while ignoring the warning signs (which is counter-intuitive if you're trying to protect people).
Yep. Exactly.
Excellent article. And delighted to see this work now spreading even further.
Just one thing to add, the Catholic Institution has indeed been very destructive and left-brain dogmatic for almost all of its history. But Old Catholic Theology as found in for example Dante, is extraordinarily "both brained" and right hemispheric (thus all his attacks on the Church). McGilchrist struggles with finding the remedy for the ills, though implicitly stating it in his last chapter on the Sacred in TMWT. A solution to rebalancing the hemispheres personally and culturally, is to be found in Dante. Understanding and combining the metaphorical Virgil & Beatrice. But insist on Virgil/Reason as a "threshold of consent".
Thanks again for the work you do!
Have you read TMWT?
Yes indeed - right after it was published here in Britain. Plus discussed it for about a year on McGilchrist's member website. It goes quite a lot further into metaphysics, ontology and even theology at the end. Revolutionary work - for decades/centuries to come.
Have you been through the whole thing too?
That's impressive. The only other person I know who's read the entirety of TMWT is me. A few others I know have read sections of it, but getting through the full weight of that tome is an accomplishment.
Indeed - and I should probably review it again (and I should admit that some of the neuroscience in Part I was skimmed).
I had huge enthusiasm for his work in the beginnnig (and still do), and I think the insights should be a mandatory part of the culture at large. It percolates slowly though, perhaps because it's written on the left-brain's territory, thus attracting mostly disgruntled left-brain tilted people, who are finding relief and explanations, but few solutions. Promoting the work to more right-brained or both-brained people is often met by long silence. But hopefully this will change - as far as I can tell the most effective solution comes through a humility and self-restraint of the left brain, which for most people necessitates some degree of "belief" in the Transcendent. Which also could be the right remedy to redress the imbalance into something like the spirit of the Florentine Renaissance, only this time from the other "direction": getting a sense of allegorical and symbolic wisdom and realities again.
I think this is intentional on his part, and necessary. If you're already balanced you don't really need to hear it. If you're not, speaking the language of the LH is the only way to reach you.
Absolutely. In normal times we wouldn't need to hear or think about this. It's because it's becoming a serious disease in society that more of us need to engage with it.
But still, there is a frustration among many that he doesn't provide more answers. I don't think that's fair, we shouldn't demand too much of one single individual, and he's clearly a genius of our times, but the solutions will have to be RH based, is my working hypothesis.
This is the single best post I've read this year. I keep coming back to it. Congratualtions on making something we've all suspected more clear. I never wanted to ascribe psychosis to the many leftists I know. Didn't want to engage in "you're crazy" shouting matches. They haven't broken w/ reality. They've just attempted to bend it to their preferred arc.
There's very little point in shouting at the insane that they're insane - being insane, they are incapable of recognizing their insanity.
So far as reality goes, the left made a hard break with it many, many years ago when the postmodernists first rejected truth as a valid ontological category. The descent into mass psychosis has simply continued from there.
Maybe we disagree about this. Let's dig a little, define our terms.
I rejected the Mass Psychosis Formation theory because it seemed extreme and based on some paper or book nobody's read (slight exaggeration). I don't think the Left made a hard break w/ reality many years ago. I think they kept going on a left brain trajectory - progressivism. They were encouraged not to quit, not to pause, certainly not to reverse course.
OK, they ignore more and more right brain insights but it's not like they need collective institutionalization or chronic schedules of psych meds. They're not crazy. They're sick, a class of neurotics. Such people have always been among us. People who routinely vote against their own interest are legion today and yesterday.. They're blocked from seeing truth by the power elite who constantly rattle their cages and conservative cages as well.
I just don't think it is helpful in the longer run to write off leftists as lunatics when that's not what McGilchrist is saying.
Strictly speaking, I think the term is mass formation, which is distinct from mass psychosis.
I'd define insanity as any disorder if the mind that leads to a disconnect between perception and reality, in particular if it then leads to dangerous, counterproductive behavior. Left brain hyper-dominance meets all of those criteria. Which isn't to say that all insanity is explained by this mechanism; rather that the phenomenon of left-brain hyper-dominance is a specific form of psychosis, which happens to match the symptomology commonly observed on the left.
There's also the clinical data showing that emotional disturbances (depression, bipolar, borderline, etc) are significantly more prevalent amongst those identifying with the left - significant both in the statistical and in the colloquial sense of the term. That's consistent with the hypothesis that the right is generally sane, and the left generally insane. Whether it's that the left attracts the insane or manufactures them is an interesting question (I suspect both).
Warlord of Mars, you're quite an articulate archon (in Greco-Roman terms not gnostic-alien) and it would be churlish of me to turn around and, from the ranks, impudently impugn your interpretive agenda of MFP so soon after after praising it to the hilt. So let me redirect my rhetorical quiver to a single classically-villainous strike against its most prestigous proponent - the very designated messenger of disinformation: Robert Malone, no less than the whistle-blowing, self-procclaimed inventor of mRNA gene therapy. And who dare trifle w/ dat guy?
I smelled a rat the moment he declaimed from the Capitol steps that the best historical example of MFP was Nazi Germany in the 30's. Ain't that cute? Bravely stepping up to speak co-vid truth to power by reinforcing the fundamental plank of Jewish moral hegemony.
Is that mere co-incidence at a crucial moment in the development of a meme? I think not. All this talk about Nazi doctors and their experiments on Jewish prisoners making us all victims now is straight out of a neo-con playbook. They lead us down paths of their choosing. Our enemy is neo-conservatism even more than libtards and blacks and gays because they're crafty vipers, not expendable minions.
In Malone's case, I'm inclined to shrug: boomers gonna boom. From what I can tell, he only started opening his eyes a couple of years ago. That said his long-standing connection to the national security state, e.g. consulting for DTRA, is cause for caution.
I certainly agree that neocons are vipers.
Greetings John —
I’m a lot late to this party since I’m only now reading through your earlier posts in order to learn more about what you have to say.
Because?
I read one of your essays which was posted on the SOTT news aggregation site (which I’ve been reading daily since June 2006).
I see SOTT has posted your latest blog entry re Cosmic Information Transducers on their site today as well. 🥳
And, I found your initial blog post published on SOTT and your interview with them which I listened to yesterday a joyfully stimulating, thoughtful and inspiring read & conversation.
Thank you so much for offering both brain and soul food to counter the joy-killers’ continuous onslaught upon our psyches of nrg-depleting faux-food.
Yesterday, I watched your interview with Harrison,Elan, & Adam on SOTT.
Another uplifting exchange.
I especially appreciated you differentiating and describing your evaluation of a values-based focus and a virtues-based focus. That cleared up some of my own annoyance with the continuous spouting of “family-values” by simply re-framing that viewpoint to “family-virtues”.
If families could focus more on acting in accordance with virtuous lifestyles, that would appeal more to me personally than focusing on family values imo.
But I digress.
I decided to check out your other blog postings and chose to start at the beginning.
While reading your above post, I was struck by the synchronicity of what I’ve been mulling over in my mind these past 3 days vis-a-vis what you’ve outlined in this particular blog post.
Thank you for stating so clearly & succinctly the Left & Right Brain Hemispheres’ different attitudes.
Now I understand better why so many of my own Right Brain Hemisphere communications with more Left Brain Hemisphere oriented minds appears to me to fall into a black hole.
Well good. That helps me realize I can simply drop my own expectations that if I just invest more nrg into reaching a better understanding with LBH-oriented minds, that we can both increase and expand our world views.
So . . . maybe not? Lol
Anyway, just wanted to acknowledge your butterfly wings effect upon my own thinking in a profoundly helpful way and to say thank you very much for that. 🤗
Blessings
I'm glad you're getting so much out of it!
Regarding the values v virtues thing, what got me thinking about that wasn't 'family values' (although it's a good example), but rather the nebulous 'our values' that are always invoked by pathocrats as their argument for why some country needs to be destroyed, some ancient tradition uprooted, or yet more freedoms and wealth stripped from the people and placed into the pathocrats own hands. We hear about 'our values' constantly ... but never about virtue.
Lolol
Right you are.
I did understand which application of that ubiquitous term “values” you were referring to but my mind shifted into another gear and I am actually personally as saturated by the incessant talk by conservatives of “family values” which as I recall began in the 70’s evangelical TV churches and became the right wing political talking point ad nauseam since. Then I would observe their families and frankly they appeared to me to reveal more dysfunction than anything I would personally “value”.
My own family stressed adhering to simple virtues like no lying, no taking anything that belongs to another, no tattling on others, no hitting, no quarreling, no yelling, no leaving messes for others to clean up, taking proper care of our own belongings, respecting others belongings— especially when borrowing from others, doing our chores and homework before playing, earning our own money — no allowances — we were too poor for that — restricted TV which bothered none of us since all 7 members were voracious readers - no sassing - no swearing by kids or parents - basic stuff like that.
I interpreted “values” to mean what a person considers valuable
And what I consider valuable are the virtues.
In current times it seems like “values” are still what people consider valuable to them but what they value are vices rather than virtues.
Like let’s see who can win the race to the bottom of the black hole.
Where I first noticed that phenomenon was with the rock bands. Who could wear the ugliest, sleeziest outfits, the most unattractive hairstyles, the foulest lyrics, the screechiest guitar sounds.
Movies followed suit.
Dressing down for fancy events. Attending the ballet in denim jean jackets. Sloppy, unkempt, slatternly, gross presentations.
One day I was admiring the beautiful color combination my friend was wearing and she said . . . “Well, it’s my responsibility to others to present an aesthetically pleasing appearance since I’m part of their environment and they have to look at me so why would I subject others to ugly or disgusting?”
I took that to heart — mainly because one of my art expressions is acting as if my body is a blank canvas and my attire is the painting. Besides, it’s as fun as creative cooking or arranging objects in space in aesthetically pleasing ways and being organized is necessary in order to easily locate items.
Whew. I went way off track there.
The point was values vs virtues.
Yep. The new definition of values means vices.
Seems as if everything has been inverted and twisted into black magic. Like an evil alchemy transforming gold into lead. Sounds like the Black Sun contraction and death principle vs the radiant solar sun of expansion and growth.
Oh right. The “values” of the pathocrats. Exactly!!
Another inversion.
Normalizing pathocracy & pathocratic values and pathologizing normality and normal bales.
The depths of deception flourish in the deep swamps. Dredge the swamp and what’s hiding down there in the mud?
I’m actually more annoyed sometimes by people believing the lies than by the liars themselves. It’s in the nature of liars to lie. Like it’s in the nature of scorpions to sting. That the liars get away with lying because people excuse their lies or are afraid to confront the liars and hold them accountable or fear the consequences or fall out of confronting liars
Maybe I just feel annoyed by the fact that they are grown adults, not children, and honoring their fears seems more important and valuable than truth and honesty and courage.
Not very compassionate or empathic on my part. I did that. The friends I most value were the ones who didn’t let me get away with nonsense. They would call me on my BS. They didn’t mince words or soft pedal or worry about hurting my precious feelings or sensitivities. I learned more about myself and what to self-correct than from all my other friends who were oh so kind. Kindness is nice. And it’s easy-peasy to be kind to others because why not?
But when it comes to liars, I am definitely not kind.
Oops. Went off track again. Time to cease and desist. Lol
Thank you for your reply. Clarified more specifically what I missed.
Aloha 🌈
You have captured perfectly what I meant about values vs virtues - actual behavior, rather than empty words. It's nice to find someone who understands that so easily. It's an entirely foreign concept to most in this age.
This:
“Well, it’s my responsibility to others to present an aesthetically pleasing appearance since I’m part of their environment and they have to look at me so why would I subject others to ugly or disgusting?”
Is something I desperately wish more people understood. Have you noticed how it's those who are most aggressively ugly who make the biggest deal about not offending others with speech? Seemingly blind (I guess they'd almost have to be) to how offensive their appearance is. The embrace of ugliness is a form of spiritual pollution far worse than anything we could dump in the air or water, in my opinion.
True. Values need to be acted out, to be "real" in a sense. And to shape reality in accordance with Virtue.
Plus, its the only way to build your own character and integrity as well, and reap the abundant rewards from it.
Potentiality vs actuality; becoming vs being; intention vs action; imagination vs realization. Focusing too much on one or the other is an error. Modern society prioritizes "values" - essentially, beliefs - and all but forgets about virtue, by which values are instantiated in the world. Thus our values become empty words.
100% agreed. And sounds like you have the "both-brained" balance here exactly right! Not one or the other, but the right blend is the answer. Or, the Unity.
Oh drat. I lost my reply when I put my phone down. I’ll have to type it out in my iPhone Notes app and copy/paste it here after I finish.
Sorry I lost my previous reply post.
Ok That’s it. I’m over playing this ridiculous one-thumb typing game on my iPhone.
I’m charging up my laptop so I can type like a genuine civilized (as opposed to civil-lies) person with all ten digits like a normal person who recognizes that that’s what it means to be a card-carrying member of the digital age — To Wit: using all ten digits to type text.
The good thing about using one digit typing is that I’m forced to be less verbose because once I get all ten digits going at light speed, I end up writing essays rather than brief comments.
That’s a warning to myself. To refuse to get carried away.
My sister calls it TMI. Too much information. And I reply, omg! And here I am complaining that I have to practically pull teeth to get people to give me enuf information. Short cuts nearly short circuit my internal motherboard. Shorthand is for secretaries. Now it’s ttyl and TL;tr. and I have to ask what do you mean?
Besides, to me TMI means Transmarginal Inhibition.
Yikes and eeek!!
Pretty much all my comments get composed on my phone, because I can do that in my comfy chair. Thank God for swipe typing though. Real composition, though, requires a keyboard.
magistral!
This is an interesting article. However, over the years I have become more and more convinced that 'Left and Right' is just a false dichotomy. The only true political dimension that matters is libertarian vs authoritarian. Both the traditional left and right are authoritarian.
The best way to see that they are a false dichotomy is that at every particular moment they maintain apparently different ideas about how to exert their authoritarian control, but often they reverse them over time. There are multiple examples of this.
Another way to see it is this: who is more similar to a Democrat politician? A Republican politician! When you scratch the thin rhetorical coating of the political discourse, you find the same desire to control others in the way that most benefits you.
I believe it was you who recently wrote an article about the purpose of false dichotomies. They are extremely useful to restrict the narrative into well defined limits. You can only lean to the right or to the left, which are the same thing!
What they want to prevent at all costs is that you oppose both and rather embrace the libertarian camp.
Researchers have discovered that human's political positions are specified on at least 6 orthogonal axes. https://6axes.github.io/ Others quote 12 axes. https://politicaltests.github.io/12axes/ That means that a proper treatment of the political space is not a spectrum, or even a 2D plane, but hyperdimensional space. Probably, over centuries, people groups move and shift through this space, and presumably there are instances where people form a thread through the hyperspace. You could then draw a line through that thread and call it your "one-dimensional political spectrum", but that would be simply an artifact of the moment. As time continues to flow, the people would presumably disperse from the thread, making it eventually impossible to draw a line through the hyperdimensional space such that every individual maps to a single point on the line. Instead, individuals start mapping to multiple points on the line, making the left-right distinction useless.
I'm not entirely sure about mapping cerebral dominance onto politics. My experience of left-brain awareness is that is more female in nature: intuitive, emotional, somewhat prone to hysteria and neurosis, suggestible (possibly hypnosis involves altering cerebral dominance), whereas the right brain is more of a military man. The current caricature of the Left is distinctly female in nature, and wholly dependent on the female vote (which appears to have been a mistake), whereas the virtues of the (non-caricature) Right are distinctly masculine: honor (largely alien to females), duty, order, strength, structure.
See Jaynes, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", one of those books that even if one doesn't agree with the basic argument, the breadth and depth of material covered make it well worth reading.
As a bipolar sufferer this post sent me into thinking.
When I was in manic mode I was very creative, and that's stereotypically a right brain thing. I even had some hallucinatory trip-like moments, without drugs. I thought that was more like right brain overfunctioning. What was happening to me then? Left brain overriding reality and bringing the right side with it?
It was probably just a bad model of the brain. :) I haven't studied McGilchrist's work directly, but one should be careful about reading too much into it. Reading too much into it is a left-brain thing. xD